To Be a rolling shell or not to be a rolling shell....
 

So my cursed 97 continues to be cursed. Here's the story:

Put in a 01 block with a 99 head, was still using the 01 alternator, running a mspnp. Ran fine, but the 01 alt doesn't have a internal regulator like a 97 so it sent 30 volts thru my system and potentially firing everything electrical.

Here's my imploded battery:
Attachment 190860

And the fired MS, it blew a lot more traces than whats pictured :( :
Attachment 190861


So I kind of give up on the car (run out of money, fml) and then it becomes a father son project with me and my dad! My dad ends up moving, so we have no garage, nor do we have any time to work on the thing now either. So we send it off to one of my dad's ole miata friends, Dave at DDMworks.

Order a MS3x with standard ms3 harness and a ms3x harness as well. The guys at DDM are slowly hating the car and wanting to burn it and roll it off a cliff just like I usually did.

They're only getting 4 volts to the CAS, which is suppose to be 12v if my memory serves me correct. I believe they've been emailing Ben quite a bit about the issue as well.

Basically at a point of two options:
1. Spend more money, having to replace the entire car harness (lights,gauges,etc) maybe an excess of $2200 (worst case scenario?)
2. Get a rolling shell with no motor/trans/diff


Now this car will be a track-rat and occasionally driven on the street. The components are good in the car, just not on the electrical side and it could use new suspension bits (xida cs plz :drool:)


So my question to my fellow gays on mt.net is what would you do! Replace the harness or find a car for sale that just blew the engine?

Edit: Also my thread title makes no sense, can a mod help <3

Wires are wires. If there's continuity from one end to the other and low resistance, it's fine. Replace fuses and relays, and it should work.

Have any miata friends who will let you borrow their CAS?

It kills me not to be working on it myself. Wish I had a place and the time to do so.

I don't know all the details but from my understanding they've tired multiple CAS and have wired it straight from CAS to ECU. But like I said..... I don't know all the details.


curly, from a track car standpoint, wouldn't you worry about other gremlins popping up down the road with this car since it's been thru electrical hell?

Not really. If it's a track only car, I'd be stripping the harness and electrical systems to a minimum. Taking the tape off would expose any bad wires and after that there's only the CAS, cops, MS, battery, alternator, injectors, starter...and beyond fuses and relays that's it. Sounds like the battery, alternator, MS, and CAS have all been replaced already.

Timing, spark, fuel, and compression. That's all you need.

I agree with curly, strip down the harness and inspect the wires. I can tell you this, i am a certified technician and i hate electrical, you may want an automotive electronics specialist to take a peak at it. Another option instead of having those guys rebuild your entire harness, you should look for one out of a wrecked miata, once the dash is out its a pretty simple swap. And while youre at it you can delete all the un wanted wiring. Either way i dont see a need for an entire rolling shell.



Just my 2 cents.

Talked to Dave.

They're getting a intermetience 5volt signal from the CAS, suppse to be 12volt to ground. So the CAS isn't sync'ing with the ECU. They've swapped out the CAS and ECU that came out of a running car and ran a direct wire from the CAS to ECU.

Thinking its a bad wire, melted wire, or something under the dash. Hopefully going to pull the dash, replace the wires and going from point to point with anything electrical we need. Maybe even shaving off 30lbs or so.

If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know :)

I'd find a recycler that will sell you a harness. My track car's harness was hacked to shit when I got it and I was not up to tracking down all the gremlins. I bought a full harness for $100 and it took about 2 hours to replace but my dash was already out of the car. I have no issues what-so-ever now. :2cents:

Brian, where did you get your harness at? I need to find one.

Got an engine harness from http://www.planet-miata.com/

50$ for it. Full one will obviously cost more, but I'm not seeing 2.2k here... just a lot of work.

Sounds like it's time to build a custom bare bones race car harness.

I bought mine from someone on here that was parting a car out. Check with Tom Neel at Parts Group or Planet Miata or maybe even Ebay.

Ill be doing this myself, way too time consuming to pay someone to do this basically unskilled labor. Its already got the ms3 and ms3x engine harness going so a lot of it kind of already done.

Checked parts group and ebay. Kind of scared to buy from someone doing a part-out, it'd suck if it didn't work. Ill look at planet-miata though.

If this happened to me I would strip the interior down to the bones. Buy an new harness and strip the harness down to the min. You only need your basic engine functions, dash, headlights and tail lights to be a functioning track car. And a few other things if you want to keep the HVAC and such.

Just rip the harness out of the car take it to your house and start tracing wires. It is not hard to find a bad wire plus it will give you the time to take all unneeded stuff out to make it a good track car. It is not hard just takes time.

Time that I don't have right now lol.

I plan to take out the un-needed wire down the road when I have the time and a garage to do so :). Which will be this summer!